RE: Announcing new font compression project

+1 on everything Tom says.

MTX patent has _never_ been an obstacle in EOT adoption, the original EOT submission (http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/01/) from the day one had all necessary disclosures and IP grants in it to satisfy W3C policies and procedures. Someone has complained that W3C patent policy is not liberal enough, and Monotype made it clear that as soon as the original submission is discussed and accepted we would do whatever was necessary to make the IP available to everyone. 

EOT didn't happen, not because of the patent but because there was a very high level of opposition in general to adopt and standardize on the technology that MSIE has been supporting for years. So, while Richard makes yet another attempt to re-write the history, I suggest (if anyone is interested to revisit the details) to look at http://www.w3.org/Fonts/Misc/minutes-2008-10

Cheers,
Vlad



> -----Original Message-----
> From: thomas.phinney@gmail.com [mailto:thomas.phinney@gmail.com] On
> Behalf Of Thomas Phinney
> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 2:53 PM
> To: rfink@readableweb.com
> Cc: www-font@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Announcing new font compression project
> 
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:40 AM, Richard Fink <rfink@readableweb.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I don't think anyone doubts that had Monotype not had the method
> patent on MTX, cross platform tools to make compressed EOT's would have
> been generally available.
> 
> I doubt it. Possible, but not certain. There was already a tool to make
> compressed EOTs freely available. The problem 14 years ago was not a
> lack of fabulous EOT-making tools, it was:
> 
> - bandwidth was lower, hardly anybody had broadband outside of work
> 
> - web browsers were using proprietary unpublished formats (EOT was
> still private, as was TrueDoc PFR)
> 
> - not all browsers supported any web font format at all
> 
> - IIRC (and I could be wrong) to make/use PFR files cost money.
> 
> All these factors caused most web developers and designers to ignore
> web fonts. Having better EOT-making tools would not have changed this.
> 
> But on the side, I think everybody is almost agreeing on why MT didn't
> release the MTX patent earlier. There were costs to doing so-primarily
> legal and also just the organizational time sink to make it happen. So
> they didn't want to put in the effort unless they could be guaranteed
> it would be used. This was a little irksome in that it created a
> chicken-and-egg problem, but perfectly understandable. It's not like
> Monotype was unclear about any of this, either.
> 
> In the end, as John says, patent issues were just one of multiple
> reasons EOT was not adopted. Besides the reasons he cited, I think that
> in at least some quarters, some folks did not want to adopt a formerly
> proprietary MS technology as a standard-either out of general distaste,
> or because it would give IE a leg up in the marketplace of browsers, as
> IE had been shipping EOT support for so many years.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> T
> 
> --
> "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has
> to make sense."
>  -Mark Twain

Received on Thursday, 29 March 2012 21:13:45 UTC